My random other project

So, I got really annoyed at what happened to Block B, and then my Browncoat instincts kicked in, and--well, now I've built a Web site that is going to be BlockB.com as soon as the domain transfer is finalized and I get the domain name mapped onto there.

Hey, I now am much better with GIMP!

Anyway, if you don't mind running over there and clicking links, checking for typos, etc., I'd appreciate that. Also if there's stuff, like Korean cultural references, that maybe needs some more background to be accessible, let me know.

Progress report

Oh, don't get excited--this was such a laughably tiny amount of progress that I wouldn't even be bothering to report it were it not my first progress in a really long time: I did an itty-bitty amount of noise removal on the first half of Chapter 8 of the Trang audiobook. I called it quits, though, because it's noise removal, and I've had enough tedious chores today already.

Bad vs. legally actionable

So, it's not like I'm trying to turn this into a K-pop blog or anything, but Block B recently had its lawsuit against its label dismissed. The case reminded me a lot of the failed class-action lawsuit against Harlequin in that the company being sued was engaged in behavior that clearly was very bad, but that, for various reasons, was not considered by the courts to actually be lawsuit-worthy.

In Block B's case, the label:

1. Did not pay members until the members started to sue.

2. Owes the members a substantial amount of money (roughly $400,000).

3. Hired as CEO a man who stole money from the member's families and then committed suicide.

Not shockingly, the members of the group feel that their label is Not A Good Label. (In fact, they are going indie now, which honestly I think is probably the best thing--in the Korean music industry the performers are typically just talking heads, so it's pretty standard for a band's legal relationship with their label to closely resemble that of a monkey to an organ grinder.)

But all that is pretty much irrelevant to the court. Why? Because the court is trying to determine if the label's actions are so bad that the contracts have been voided. And the court said no.

Why? Well, the court looked at the above points and said, Yeah, but once you did sue, the label paid you. And yeah, they still owe you money, but it sounds like they're planning on someday paying you that, too. Plus, there's no evidence that the label underpaid you because they were trying to rob you--it's more likely that they underpaid you because they're completely disorganized and keep craptacular records.

You might think that that sort of thing wouldn't happen here, but rest assured, it does: What a court considers Bad is often far below most people's Get Me the Hell Out threshold. It's kind of like the difference between someone being a bad driver and someone having their license revoked--there's a whole grey area in there where you don't let that person drive your kids around. And it's something to keep in mind before you go a-signing contracts with a publisher or other company that may or may not actually prove to be of service to you.

Haters gonna hate

I saw this via a Twitter retweet, and I feel like it's one of those things that I'm supposed to be able to relate to (since I am a woman who writes science fiction and all), but I can't, really.

To clarify: I can certainly relate to the joys of being treated like shit by people who want to put me down. That, FYI, is the modus operandi of people who don't like the stories being written about them by journalists. When I was a reporter, I was regularly and consistently accused of being:

1. Too dumb to understand the real story.

2. Too ignorant to understand the real story.

3. On the take by a company's competitors.

4. A puppet of my editors or publisher, who were on the take.

5. An evil person, just generally.

This happened at least once a week. I should note for the record that my stories won awards and all that, so despite being the product of a drooling, corrupt, malevolent idiot, my work held up pretty well.

Were these insults occasionally delivered in a sexist manner? Yes, they were--albeit rarely (the physical threats were rare, too). But once someone has crossed the line so far that they are telling you to your face that you are too stupid to understand anything, suggesting that your gender is to blame is really not much of a stretch. (Just like if someone is so self-absorbed that they hijack a forum with their endless reminiscences of 1969--seriously, you think sexism is to blame? You think that guy knows you're a woman or even realizes you exist? You think he would treat you better if you were a man? No, no, no. Here is an inside look at his thought process: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!!!)

The advantage of being a reporter is that reporters are treated this way all the time. We all get this. It is normal. If it doesn't happen, you start to worry--the saying is that if you're not pissing people off, you're not doing your job. (Likewise if some people don't truly hate your writing, you're probably being too generic and derivative.) There are very few professions where receiving a death threat gets you applause and high-fives from your co-workers. Journalism is one of them.

Why? Because journalists know that haters gonna hate. We don't sit around and say, "Why are people treating me this way?" We know why: Because they're assholes, that's why. The bigger the asshole, the worse they will treat you.

And they are bullies. These are people whose sole pleasure in life--seriously, it's their only form of accomplishment--comes from hurting other people. If they see vulnerability (for example, a long post complaining about how mean people are to women SF writers), they will strike (hence the U SUX BIT^ch!!11! replies--most likely from people who have NEVER, EVER read Ann Aguire's books and have no particular opinions about science fiction or literature in general). That kind of thing is chum in the water to these people, and the more upset you get, the better they feel.

In a nutshell: Don't feed the trolls.

Really random link

This is a Wall Street Journal interview with Kid Rock about how he's pricing his concert tickets at $20 but still hoping to make s---tons, or perhaps even f---tons, of money. Interesting stuff--basically he's hoping that by lowering the barriers to entry, he'll 1. sell more tickets, making him more fans in the long run, and 2. make more money, because he'll be getting a share of T shirt and beer sales. (And he's got very high expectations for those beer sales.)

How things have changed

Lindsay Buroker has been doing some excellent posts on building a fan base--well worth a read.

But I was most interested in the post where she reveals her sales numbers for the first month for each new release: 2,000 copies of the fourth book in her Emperor's Edge series, 2,500 copies of the fifth book, and 3,000 copies (and counting) of the sixth book.

Why was that so interesting? Because those numbers really suck!

Or at least they suck by traditional publishing standards.

If Buroker was with a large, commercial publishing house, she'd have to sell between 20,000 and 30,000 copies of each title to get a contract for her next book--and she'd have to do it within a few months of release.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: This is what makes me happy about self-publishing. A niche novelist with a relatively small audience can make a living on writing alone--writing fiction, no less.

Oh, and I get to read her books!

I didn't really expect anything different

This is an interesting post on Passive Voice (original post by Brian DeFiore--awesomely titled "E-Books and Profitability: What We've Always Said and Publishers Have Always Denied"--here). It's a breakdown of how much HarperCollins makes off of hardcovers vs. e-books, and it includes how much the author gets.

The bottom line? HarperCollins does way better, and writers get royally screwed. Quoth DeFiore:

Look at Harper’s own numbers:

$27.99 hardcover generates $5.67 profit to publisher and $4.20 royalty to author

$14.99 agency priced e-book generates $7.87 profit to publisher and $2.62 royalty to author.

I will point out that I make more than $2.62 every time I sell an e-book copy of Trust. Just saying.

Ugh

Just letting everyone know that 1. I am still here, and 2. I am hoping to be able to get back to work sooner rather than later. The situation is not nearly as bad as the one Dean Wesley Smith found himself in, but I shall note that the past three days have been spent...wait for it...filing. Yes, FILING. As in putting pieces of paper into some kind of coherent order. I've got at least another day of it coming up. Yup! Bachelor's degree from Harvard University, master's from NYU, writing awards, two novels done, and I'm a full-time secretary now--and not even one from this decade! (So you don't get the wrong idea about my brother, these are not his papers. This is just one of the things he was in the midst of doing that I have to take over now.)

You know, if you're going to use Twitter...

...you might want to take 30 seconds or so and learn how it actually works. I keep having people respond to or favorite retweets as though they are things I wrote myself--that "RT @somebodywhoisn'tme:" actually does mean something, OK? It's like misspelling words or using bad grammar: You might have a point, but you've just made yourself look really ignorant, which isn't going to help your credibility.

Bitchy rant over--sorry about that. I'll make it up to you with my new favorite song....

Some interesting links from May

Kris Rusch had an interesting post about work habits--I'm particularly interested in the fact that she doesn't mind it when her time is all chopped up (which kind of kills my writing). Something to think about....

I think it's pretty awesome that Amazon has figured out a way to legally publish and monetize fan fiction. YouTube does something similar, and I'm all for it. I realize that makes me a bit of an outlier, but the fact is that people have always written fan fiction (in fact, there's an entire genre of fiction called the Robinsonade, which is basically Robinson Crusoe fan fiction--The Swiss Family Robinson is only the most famous example). In addition, some of my first fiction was fan fiction (a Firefly fanfic, and years before, a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode), and I think writing fanfic is a great way for people to learn to write novels--basically the character- and world-generation have been taken care of, so you just focus on plot and dialog and develop those skills. It's like training wheels: Eventually you get confident enough to create your own characters and world, and then you're off!

And this spoof is not actually about publishing, but it does underscore how you can spin data to mean anything you like. I'm particularly fond of #20: Electrification rates have stagnated since the 1960s. Just like the way the rates of e-book adoption are slowing!

Do you want people to enjoy your work, or build a shrine to it?

So, I'm back home, and I'm going to try to get gradually back into the swing of things. Emotional issues aside (because those are so very easy to ignore), as a practical matter my brother's death puts quite a bit of responsibility on me, so let's just say I don't expect to be brilliantly focused. And I may just need to switch projects for a while--like I said before, Trials is kind of a rough book with a lot of loss in it, and it may just be too much right now. I really, really, really do not want to produce my very own version of Accordion Crimes.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Dialectrix, who is an Australian hip-hop artist who I happen to like a lot (listen here), posted this rant about how people should not buy his music digitally, because then you'll listen to the songs out of order and ignore his beautiful cover art and won't be able to display it on your shelves so that all your friends can see it.

And wow, the whole thing is both totally misguided and coming from a place I can totally understand. The minute you finish a major project, be it an album or a novel, you feel really entitled to some serious love! You don't want to think about, say, giving it away for free (a strategy, I should note, that has been working just fine this past month despite receiving zero attention from me), or people ripping your songs out from their careful order and mixing them up with a bunch of other music like they were some kind of radio DJ or something!

"I see the convenience in newer technologies," writes Dialectrix, but he's kidding himself. What he doesn't see is that if the technology isn't convenient, I won't use it. At this point, if the music is not on my iPod (which I can plug into both my home and car stereo), I simply don't listen to it. And that actually predated my getting the iPod--I increasingly was not bothering to buy CDs or to listen to the ones I bought because it was kind of a pain. (Just like I was increasingly not buying paper books, come to think of it--it's the clutter factor.)

The way things are now, I listen to Dialectrix all the time--in fact, I listen to him even more than I really want to because my iPod has fallen in love and plays his music every other song. (Easy there, iPod--he's a married father. And I think he may be a little prejudiced against your kind.) If I did what Dialectrix wanted, I would never actually consume the media he produces, which seems rather counterproductive

And of course, Dialectrix is risking pushback from fans who feel insulted and put upon by these sorts of demands. At least Dialectrix is still making his work available digitally (unlike Stephen King who seems to be actively wooing pirates). Nonetheless, it's easy to get pirated digital media for free, and I think the last thing you want to do is tell the people who do pay for your digital media that you don't appreciate it.

Very sad news

My brother, age 46, passed away quite unexpectedly this morning thanks to a massive heart attack. Obviously, things are going to go dark here for quite some time....

Hate and the Internet

Today isn't a work day for various reasons, but I thought this was an interesting article on trolling that also pretty much applies to reviews in general. Something to keep in mind:

But sheer experience is also altering the landscape. After you've been through one or two of these hatestorms, you recognize a very simple reality: They change nothing.... Everybody knows there is a vague climate of hate surrounding everything that is distinct in any way. So who cares?